Tag: diversityinsff

The Hugo Awards were last night. I did not stay up to watch the livestream because I’m an old lady (they didn’t even START until 11pm EDT). However plenty of people did, so there are a lot of postmortems floating around.

You may remember the controversy a few months ago when the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies, a group of angry conservatives who felt that the reason they weren’t winning Hugos was because of a secret liberal conspiracy and not because they failed at writing good books, teamed up with GamerGaters and stuffed the Hugo nomination ballots with tons of their own works. Even after the ineligible works of theirs were disqualified, a lot of the awards were entirely filled with puppies nominees. Vox Day, head of the group, threatened that they would continue to hold the Hugos hostage every year until people finally gave in and voted for him. Later, when it became apparent that a lot of people were planning to vote “No Award” in those categories where they felt none of the nominees deserved it, Vox Day and the other puppies decided that losing was actually a moral victory for them and that had been their plan all along.

Congrats to the winners! And congrats to No Award most of all. Not a single puppy won an award. The puppies believed that they were taking the awards out of the hands of a liberal minority hell bent on forcing diversity on the world and putting them into the hands of a silent conservative majority, but from the results of this vote, it’s pretty clear that silent majority doesn’t exist. I guess now we wait to see what next year’s awards will bring.

So I went to NecronomiCon Providence this weekend! Sort of. I wasn’t actually registered for the con itself, but I went to some of the peripheral events, including the Eldritch Ball, Lovecraft’s 125th birthday celebration, and the dealer’s hall.

NecronomiCon is a conference celebrating the work of H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft was a Providence native and many Providence landmarks made it into his books. Miskatonic University is thought to be modeled after Brown University. Lovecraft’s grave is famously inscribed with the words I AM PROVIDENCE. When I was living off Hope St in Providence, I walked through that graveyard very often.

A tiny Cthulhu on Lovecraft’s grave

The con happens every other year (though this is only the second time it has run), and has attendees from all over the world. Many of the panels are academic, and the con makes it quite clear that though they love his work, Lovecraft’s bigotry and racism are not being overlooked. The setting of the con is gorgeous, with events taking place in the Biltmore Hotel, the Providence Athenaeum, and the First Baptist Church in America.

Overall, a very enjoyable con, with a lot of friendly and enthusiastic attendees. Walking through the city, it was very easy to pick out the con goers out of a crowd. Some of the local response to the con seemed a little stilted (“Hey there NecronomiCon attendees! Boy am I a big fan of that…” *looks at smudged ink on hand* “…Cathy?”) but I may actually register for the con next time and attend it for real.